Jason Todhunter, associate director at Faber Maunsell designed and planned the new facility, and has undertaken all technical project supervision. "Warrington Borough Council required a cutting edge control room facility. Previously CCTV monitoring was undertaken from an outdated control room within Warrington's police headquarters. The new development incorporates Warrington Borough Council's security monitoring as well as care call and emergency planning services," commented Todhunter.
Images displayed on the JVC command wall system are fed from existing CCTV cameras in the public areas of Warrington. Additional cameras monitor the site perimeter. The site also incorporates intercom and access control. Michelle Ryall, JVC's northern area sales manager, outlines the benefits of command wall monitoring: "The images produced by JVC's projector are of a high resolution SXGA plus display resolution and when displayed on the CinePro screens are viewable and visible even in high ambient light conditions, making them the ideal solution for security monitoring."
The SX21 uses a short throw lens to project images generated via a Zandar MultiViewer, which was installed by emediavision.com. Real-time images are captured from all over the borough and displayed in multi-image view. This technology enables users, with the simple click of a button on any area selected on the screen, to easily view all of the security cameras in that area.
Zandar Technologies provides a range of MultiViewer solutions, whether the sources are from security cameras, videotape or computer sources. Likewise Zandar MultiViewers can drive video displays or high-resolution displays, such as the SX21 projector and plasma or LCD monitors. According to Deirdre Smith, CEO of Zandar Technologies: "the flexibility of the Zandar MultiViewer enabled Faber Maunsell to concentrate on their prime objectives. We simply provided the means to combine, view and manipulate the various sources they needed to monitor".
Todhunter stated: "There are obvious technical benefits to using the command wall system provided by JVC. It reduces the power consumption, reduces the air conditioning requirements and offers flexibility for the future control room and security monitoring expansions. Setup is simple and straight forward and the improved flexibility that projection offers provides major expansion benefits over a traditional monitor walls. The unit has to operate for 24 hours a day and this combination provides the right quality of production for such continued use. On top of all that, the sales and service from JVC has been very helpful."
(Sarah Rushton-Read)